Metabolic engineering of Vibrio natriegens

Abstract

Vibrio natriegens is emerging as a promising host for biotechnology which is basically due to the remarkable intrinsic properties such as the exceptionally high growth and substrate consumption rates. The facultatively anaerobic marine bacterium possesses a versatile metabolism, is able to utilize a variety of substrates as carbon and energy sources and is easy to handle in the lab. These features initiated the rapid development of genetic tools and resulted in extensive engineering of production strains in the past years. Although recent examples illustrate the potential of V. natriegens for biotechnology, a comprehensive understanding of the metabolism and its regulation is still lacking but essential to exploit the full potential of this bacterium. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge on the physiological traits and the genomic organization, provide an overview of the available genetic engineering tools and recent advances in metabolic engineering of V. natriegens. Finally, we discuss the obstacles which have to be overcome in order to establish V. natriegens as industrial production host.

Keywords: Vibrio natriegens; genetic engineering; industrial biotechnology; metabolic engineering; physiology; synthetic biology.

Figure 1. Record of PubMed-indexed publications on V. natriegens

(Query = ‘Vibrio natriegens’ or ‘Beneckea natriegens’ or ‘Pseudomonas natriegens’; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/; accessed: 19/01/2021).

Figure 2. Transmission electron microscopy of V. natriegens with one polar flagellum per cell

Bar at the left bottom corner represents the scale of 2 µm.

Figure 3. Schematic representation of the central carbon metabolic pathways in V. natriegens

Locus tags of prominent genes are depicted if redundantly annotated and core genes (under the given test conditions) are highlighted in red [14]. Amino acid synthesis pathways are clustered in families and only key branching points are depicted. Amino acids are abbreviated with the universal three-letter code. Abbreviations: Ac, acetate; Ac-CoA, acetyl-coenzyme A; ED, Entner–Doudoroff pathway; Et, ethanol; Glc, glucose; Glcn, gluconate; PHB, polyhydroxybutyrate biosynthesis pathway; Pyr, pyruvate; TCA, tricaboxylic acid cycle.

Figure 4. Anticipated steps in systems metabolic engineering to transform V. natriegens into a biotechnological platform strain